Sunday 29 June 2014

The DUFF (Designated Ugly Fat Friend) by Kody Keplinger

This  review is unedited and may or may not make little sense. So I apologise for that.
I suggest if you are reading this book you look into what it s about because you don't want to be surprised like I was...
On a whole though this book was a really different read for me and I'm glad I read it. I did read this book because of the upcoming TV show, which I'm so confused on how that will happen. I mean how many episodes will there be? And I'm pretty sure they are going to make it into the most cheeriest thing they can ever make but I suppose they do that in all YA book to movie adaptations and I really do like the cast!
The kind of 'review' I wrote below is me voicing my very confused thoughts so I apologise if they don't make much sense but here you go :)...
SPOILERS FROM HERE ON!!!!! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!

I found the book enjoyable enough as a whole. The characters were interesting and I especially liked Bianca's friends Casey and Jessica. To be honest they were probably my favourite characters. I found Bianca, the main character funny and interesting but toward the end she kind of ignored me and there were times where I felt like pouring a drink over her... Wesley was okay and I DEFINATELY liked him more as the story progressed but we still didn't learn a lot about him by the end which was disappointing. But at the start he did act like a major asshole and even in the very last chapter when they FINALLY get together he was kind of like his old self, which I get the whole issue on, you shouldn't change yourself for anyone and stuff but Wesley did seem different but as soon as Bianca came to him he was all assholey (I realise that isn't a word...) and cocky again. But I understand that that was just part of his personality and in the end it wasn't that big of a deal. And I'm not even going to talk about Tony because Tony was kind of perfect, but at the same time boring and definitely NOT the perfect person for Bianca, n matter what she thought.
So now lets talk about Bianca and Wesley's relationship... So as I mentioned earlier I naïvely missed what it meant by "enemies with benefits" which was honesty pretty stupid of me. For some reason I thought it would just be kissing and talking and I'm cringing at how stupid that is now. So at first when I started to realise how much sex was a part of this book I was a little turned off but as I kept reading I kind of understood Bianca's choice, and even though it wouldn't have been my choice on how to escape from all the crap in her life, I still could see why Bianca chose that. So by the time I was halfway through the book I was no longer concerned about all TEH sex and I just kept flying through it. I don't know if this is the right thing to say but I found their relationship toward the end of the book as quite cute. Yes, yes, I know that sounds terrible! But I was (sadly) super happy when Wesley punched Bianca's dad and made sure she was alright. And I also found the notes he sent as really nice too, as cliché as that sounds. But at the end Bianca just came up to him and generally said 'cool we're dating, I have feelings for you, we're not going to sleep together, don't kiss me and you have to put up with me cause I'm not changing' and Wesley basically agreed with her and didn't even bring up the fact that he said he loved her or anything else he wrote in his earlier letter and when the book ended I was kind of just left blinking out
into space.
One part of this book that confused me was the whole 'philosophy' thing about bending the DUFF. I was kind of confused by the idea of, if you have friends it means your the fat and ugly one? I don't know... I was just confused by that. Also it was surprising how long it took for Bianca to realise that she shouldn't call people sluts and whores since anyone could basically accuse her of being one too. I thought of assumed she realised that toward the start but I guess I was wrong...

A couple of things I didn't really like about this book that I usually don't like in many contemporise is...
1. The fact that it took over 200 pages to work out a relationship which I predicted from basically page 2. I hate how many unnecessary arguments and plot twists contempory books have before the two characters get together. I know that it's to properly form the story but it seriously makes me super mad at times. Its books like these that make me want to invent a teleporting system that can teleport me into these books so I can freaking help the characters and give them needed suggestions on what to do.
2. The fact that the book just ended!!! Just when they got together!!! No more chapters, no epilogue, no novella. Nothing!!! It's really maddening!!! (Also not sure if maddening is a word or not or whether it's spelt right so sorry for that...) I really wanted to see Wesley and Bianca's relationship develop as well as find out about other characters! I also really wanted to know more about Wesley and his family.
These two reasons are probably what really made this book not a favourite for me as well as the kind of lack of character development. I'm still though a little unsure of what I think about this book and I'm pretty sure if I read this again when I'm older I'll enjoy it a lot more. But I'm still super curious to watch this TV show. Does anyone else think it will be like Mean Girls redone?

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